


two hearts and a grave

by spidye



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Sad Ending, Soul Stone (Marvel), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-05 08:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18362657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidye/pseuds/spidye
Summary: “You’re going to make it,” Shuri says, forcing hope into her tone. “You can do this. We believe in you.” The lie stings like vinegar in the back of her throat, and she grimaces, looking away from the screen. As darkness closes in over Vormir, Shuri’s heart sinks with dread.Peter Parker is going to die again, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.





	two hearts and a grave

There’s no body. His coffin carries only rose petals.

The procession for Peter Benjamin Parker is one of hundreds of funerals that day. It’s brief, sparsely attended. None of the mourners present even know Peter personally; most are volunteers, spending their hours at funerals for those people who have no relatives or were unidentified after the snap. Helping the dead be peacefully laid to rest must bring them some sort of comfort, these saints in black, who press kisses to their fingertips and their fingertips to empty caskets.

They say things to make each other feel better: that the dead are never really gone, that death is only permanent if they are forgotten, that they will live on through the memories people have of you. But it doesn’t help much for people like Peter, who is just another faceless casualty of Thanos, with no-one to remember him besides the strangers at his service. In the endless parade of caskets and fresh headstones commemorating those lost to the snap, Peter’s grave sits alone, with no flowers near the delicately carved marker. He didn’t even get to be put beside Ben. 

By the time the mourners go home tonight, he’ll be dead in memory, too.

 **PETER BENJAMIN PARKER**  
2002 - 2018

Peter’s is a child’s coffin, inexpensive and thin. Even the speech is short and standard. The mourners huddle around the grave, muttering their prayers over the boy’s soul, scattering white rose petals over the casket as earth is shoveled on top of it. When it’s complete, they move on to the next empty casket waiting. One woman, long since greyed and her hands shaking, stands at his grave a moment longer. She’s seen a dozen graves for such young ages today, and said prayers for the souls of children — even infants.

And yet, for a reason she cannot place, _this_ is the one that brings tears to her eyes. She touches his headstone with two gentle fingers. “Your soul — at _peace_ ,” she whispers, as if a command.

He's as far from peace as he can get.

 

* * *

 

Dust and fragments of stone swirl around Peter’s feet, stirred up by the fierce winds of Vormir.

The wind is cold and merciless, chapping whatever parts of skin it can touch — his lips and knuckles have long since cracked and gone white in the freezing tempest. Even with his three layers of clothing and the scarf over his nose and mouth, it still manages to be unbearably cold, making Peter’s teeth chatter as he walks. But, despite the burning chill in the air, Peter makes his way over the rocky terrain at a determined pace.

Well, as determined as he can be. With the vis-goggles blocking his eyesight completely, Peter is blind — walking by sense alone, one foot at a time over the rocky crags in front of him, hands outstretched and waving every so often to maintain his balance. Thankfully, this path is well worn, and the terrain’s incline is gentle. Were he to deviate from the path, Peter would be met with rocks so sharp they would cut the soles of his shoes. He shudders imagining what they would do to the palms of his hands.

The sky is just as much of a danger as the rocks. Overhead, Vormir’s moon hangs perfectly poised in the crystalized chasm above. It looms close, taking up a majority of the sky; so close that its pocks and craters would be easily visible to the naked eye. But if Peter were to take his goggles off, he’d be blinded — permanently, if he looked up to admire the moon. _A fractal light,_ Peter remembers. The UV light is amplified by a double atmosphere, like the sunshine through a magnifying glass. Despite the intensity of the light to his eyes, it provides little warmth, and even less daylight. Still, whenever Peter passes through a small beam of moonlight, he brings his shoulders up to his ears in a grateful shiver, glad to have at least a little bit of warmth.

When the slope of the ground beneath his feet steeply pitches up, Peter slows to a stop. He tips his head up and sets his hands on his hips, catching his breath with a few measured huffs. Once his heart rate is steady, he prepares himself for the next part of his trip. Though all Peter sees is blackness, he sticks his hands out in front of him, imagining what’s a few feet away: the face of the mountain in its steepest place, and his challenge for the day.

Fondly dubbed the _Knife_ , the peak itself is a natural phenomenon that stands alone, cutting into the low-hanging clouds over Vormir and causing the fog to wisp and curl in its wake. Around it, other mountains are laid out in thick ridges and recognizable ranges; even Vormir’s menacing twin peaks are visible in the distance. But the _Knife_ is an isolated, tooth-like monolith, standing far from the mountains around it. At one time, it may have been naturally shaped, but it looks as if some great hand had struck the mountain and let its outermost parts crumble away. This left nothing but the _Knife_ : a steep obelisk that rises two thousand feet straight up.

 _That’s four times taller than the Washington Monument,_ Peter reminds himself. _You just gotta climb the Monument four times._

_Yeah, I can do that four times. Definitely._

Peter pivots his right foot, feeling for the familiar indentation in the ground, and when he doesn’t find it, he lets his chin drop to his chest. “Okay,” Peter says, lifting his voice over the howling of the wind, “how are we looking, guys? I think I’m off, ‘cause I don’t feel the little divot.”

“It would be good to move a few feet to your right,” comes Shuri’s voice from his comm.

Two hundred feet below the ground and a thousand feet behind him, Shuri sits in front of a control panel, brows taut as she watches Peter’s progress on the screen before her. The screen gives her a thermal and topographic view of what Peter sees, along with his vitals. 

 

 **0 feet.** _Pulse:_ 82 BPM.  _Oxygen:_ 99%. _Body temp:_ 98.2F.  _Outside temp:_ 24F.

In a chair beside Shuri is Sam Wilson, glaring at the screen with his arms crossed over his chest as if it’ll make the _Knife_ shrink in height. Between and in front of them is a microphone and a speaker, which crackles occasionally with the feedback of wind in Peter’s mic.

“Remember what we talked about,” Sam says, leaning forward. “Take it slow this time. Your hands get cold, you put your back to the rock and warm them up. This ain’t a race.”

“Yeah,” says Peter, currently sidestepping his way along the path. Though he can’t see, he has still tipped his head down, as if to watch where he’s going. When his right foot hits a sizable dip in the ground, Peter slows to a shuffle until his toes meet the cold steel of a metal spike in the ground — his marker, his starting point. “Got it,” he huffs, dropping to one knee. He hauls his backpack off his shoulders.

“Equipment check,” comes Sam’s voice through the comm.

“Uh huh,” Peter affirms, already fumbling to unzip the bag. “I know the drill, there are tw—”

“Twelve things that should be in the bag, and two things on the outside,” Shuri says over him. “Name them to us as you feel them.”

Peter’s hands slip into the bag, brushing the items inside. They had made this mistake once before — something had fallen from the bag and Peter had been a fourth of the way up the _Knife_  before they realized that he couldn’t go on without it. Doing this in the blind and with such adverse conditions meant there was no limit to the number of precautions they could and would take.

“Rope,” Peter says, withdrawing the coil and setting it on the ground.

“One,” echoes Shuri.

“Handheld radio.” He sets it down in the center of the rope.

“Two.”

“Beacon, uh,” begins Peter, pausing to feel the thing in his hands. It’s heavy and circular, like a weight. Underneath, his fingers trace over a straight line etched into its metal. “Beacon part one.”

“That’s three,” Shuri says. Peter deposits the beacon part in the center of the coil of rope.

“Beacon part two—”

“Four.”

“Parts three and four, and the first aid kit.”

“Five, six, and seven.”

“Oh— water.” He pulls the scarf down and unscrews the lid to the thermos eagerly, tipping the bottle back and allowing the cool liquid to wash down his throat. It makes him colder, but it soothes the dryness in his throat.

“Is the lid too tight?” Sam asks. “You said it was a pain for you last time.”

Peter shakes his head as he replaces the scarf over his nose and mouth, then realizes Sam can’t see that. “No, I just tried it. It’s good. —Knife.”

“The water was eight, the knife is nine,” Shuri says. Her tone turns playful. “Have you made many friends with snails? You share their distaste for speed, Peter.”

“Yeah, well, you share their distaste for— um...” Peter stalls out, and laughter from both Shuri and Sam ripples through the comm. It’s pleasant, brings a little smile to Peter’s face under the scarf.

He counts up to twelve, and then restates each item as he puts it back in the backpack to double check inventory. When the bag is zipped, he moves to the longer items velcroed to the outside of the bag — the beacon antennae. Both are in good shape, marked and tabbed with tape to make it easier for Peter to assemble and operate when he reaches the top of the _Knife._

 _If_ he reaches the top.

“All packed,” announces Peter, pulling the backpack over his shoulders and tightening the straps. He bounces on his toes a little, bending over once to touch them and stretch out his back. When he stands, he shakes out his hands, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times, kicking out his feet as he does. “I’m ready.”

“Good. You should have around twenty more minutes of moonlight today. Like Sam said, it is _not_ a race, but don’t waste time.” Shuri’s voice is tighter than it had been a moment ago; Peter feels the same apprehension sitting in his own gut. But the sooner he starts, then the sooner it’s over with. He squares his shoulders as Shuri says, “Good luck, Peter.”

Peter counts off three paces forward, hands stuck out in front of him. On the fourth, his fingers meet the cool surface of the _Knife_ ’s steepest incline. Peter gives a shallow exhale, allowing his fingers to adhere to the surface. He counts to three again — counting is good, Sam had taught him — and then hoists himself up, putting one hand over his head, then the next. Right foot, left hand, left foot, right hand, repeat. Even though the vis-goggles turn Peter’s vision completely black, he has his chin tilted up, gazing what would be skyward as he climbs.

On the screen, Shuri watches Peter’s progress, chewing on the inside of her lip. He makes the quickest progress at the base of the mountain — even quicker than he had been walking. The granite is smooth and easy to climb, with at least a little slope to it. Peter likens it to the Empire State: no sharp surprises to cut his hands, no sudden drops, and though the wind is still strong, it’s the least right here. It’s the easiest part — level one, Shuri calls it, an expanse of 400 feet of flat rock, which is a piece of cake for Peter’s sticky hands.

 

 **436 feet.** _Pulse:_ 92 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 97%.   _Body temp:_ 97F. _Outside temp:_ 12.2F.

The primary indicator that he’s out of the easy territory is the wind. What had been a strong breeze on the ground will soon become a gale — the higher he gets, the harder the wind will batter him. The first heavy gust knocks his balance off, sending him skittering to the side — he sways, going still for a moment to recover. On his back, the two beacon antennae clack together, as if warning him.

“Easy.” Sam says it like a command, watching Peter’s vitals raise on the glowing screen before him. “Take it easy. Just a little wind. You can handle it.”

“I _know,_ ” Peter’s voice crackles through the microphone. He can handle it now, but give it a few hundred feet. For the umpteenth time today, Peter mutters, “one, two, three,” and pulls his body upwards.

Shuri’s mouth lifts into a smile, and she narrows her eyes. “Are you imitating Sam’s voice?”

“Uhh.” Peter blinks under the goggles, right hand stalling as he reaches up. “Yeah, obviously, or else it wouldn’t work. It’s a mantra, you know— if you don’t say it in his voice it loses its magic.” The comm rewards Peter for his joke with the warm sound of Sam’s laughter — the good kind, where he closes his eyes and hugs his chest by crossing his arms, uses his feet to push his chair back on its back two pegs. Peter had learned that the Sam Chair Trick was very dangerous, after trying to imitate him and winding up flat on his back with his legs in the air like an overturned turtle. Shuri has that picture set as her phone’s wallpaper.

“He likes the thought of himself as magic,” Shuri giggles, and it’s like someone blew bubbles inside Peter’s chest. He giggles back, instantly feeling lighter and pulling himself upwards with ease.

The monitor is split into two screens. The right screen displays the surrounding geography and an aerial map view of the _Knife_ , with a small red dot to track Peter’s location. On the left is a detailed thermal display of Peter’s perspective from the vis-goggles. Against the cold rock face of the _Knife,_ Peter is ridiculously small — just a speck maneuvering its way upwards against this massive peak. Shuri had designed the vis-goggles to the best of her ability and their resources, but there was no way to get that feed through to Peter visually. The compound didn’t have the materials for her to create more advanced tools. She’d give anything to be in her lab — just for five minutes to grab a few necessities to make this whole situation easier.

But nobody is going home. Not without getting the whole team back; right now, it’s just the three of them, alone in the compound. Getting the whole team back means getting a signal to them, and getting a signal to them means Peter climbing the _Knife_ and setting up that beacon.

So, for now, lacking the equipment needed to make this journey, Peter climbs the mountain in the blind, and Shuri and Sam talk him through it. The idea had excited him the first time. “It’ll be just like Mission Impossible,” he had asked, eyes gleaming, to which Shuri had lit up, answering “Yes, exactly like that!”

Now, crawling up the side of the mountain with the wind tearing into him and thirty pounds of equipment on his back, Peter decides he really hates Mission Impossible.

 

 **614 feet.** _Pulse:_ 105 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 95.5%.   _Body temp:_ 95.7F. _Outside temp:_ 9F.

The smooth granite has turned into sharp crags and uneven rubble, spiking skywards as if hundreds of jagged fingers are pointing up accusingly at the low-hanging moon over Vormir. Peter has to climb carefully now, no longer sticking by his fingertips — instead, he has to grope for handholds among the spikes of rock, feeling out his way before he can put his full weight on his hands and toes. The rocks are sharp and unforgiving of any mistakes, tapering off to cruel points that cause Peter to hiss and complain if he misplaces his hand.

Shuri keeps him going, encouraging him and guiding him though her screen. Over the howling of the wind and the pounding of his own heart, her voice is the only thing Peter wants to hear. It’s sweet, flawlessly confident, as if Shuri were climbing the mountain herself; each time she speaks, it chases the cold away.

 _You’re doing wonderfully, Peter._ Prompted by the cold and the monotonous nature of his climb, Peter’s curiosity stirs to life, focusing on Shuri, who he imagines sitting behind her monitor. He wonders how she looks right now.

 _Move your hand to the right, Peter._ Brows taut with concern? Eyes glued to the screen? Does she rub her knuckles nervously like he does?

 _It’s going to get steeper here, Peter, be careful._ Maybe she bounces her leg like MJ. Maybe she doesn’t do anything at all. He blinks rapidly into the simulated darkness of his vis-goggles, going still for a moment to collect himself.

When he tries to move up again, his arm feels sore and rigid. “Okay, not good, not feeling good,” he breathes, too low to be heard over the comms. He retreats to his previous position, letting his legs balance most of his weight. _—A little break can’t hurt._ _I’m more than a fourth of the way up._

But what comes with a thirty second break is the inevitable symptom of his anxiety and adrenaline, the lovechild of his trembling hands and hiccuping breathing: talking. He feels his mouth opening, tongue flicking over dry lips in preparation to speak — it’s already a train wreck, he can feel it coming. _Don’t ask stupid questions,_ he tries to warn himself himself, to brake the train by biting down on his tongue, but it’s like hearing himself in a dream:

“Hey, Shuri?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering, uh— d’you like movies?”

A moment of silence from the comms. For a moment, Peter wonders if he’s overstepped— if he should have called her _princess_ or _your highness_ , if he should have asked her anything at all. He cringes. Who doesn’t like movies? Maybe Shuri doesn’t. _God, great job, Peter. She’s one of two people you have to be around right now and you still don’t know how to have a conversation like a normal friend._

“Well, uh, _I_ happen to like the Notebook.” Sam is the one to break the silence, deadpanning over the comm. He’s grinning at Shuri, who had swiveled to fix him with wide eyes at Peter’s question. _Next gen Avengers have no social skills,_ he notes. That’ll be a class to suggest to Steve once they get everybody home. Sam had given her a lift of the shoulders and a shake of the head as if to say, _well, do you?_

 _I don’t know what to say!_ Her eyes had been wide, imploring him for help.

“Oh,” Peter answers Sam, brows furrowing. Shuri turns back to the screen, looking at Peter’s visual data. The little red speck that represents him on the aerial camera is tucked against the rock. Its partner diagram on the right displays the view from his vis-goggles; he’s resting with one arm over his head, and Shuri briefly visualizes him— cheeks windbitten and red, tufts of hair buffeted this way and that by the wind as he clings to the side of the mountain.

“Yes, I like movies,” Shuri says to this visual image, watching what response her brain will conjure up for the imagined Peter that’s stuck to the rockface. She imagines Peter smiling, resting his head against the rock lazily.

Sure enough, Peter speaks with the hint of a smile in his voice. “Really? That’s cool. I donno— I mean, I donno what kind of movies you like, but maybe you can come see a movie with my friends and I if we get home.”

 _If._ Not when. Sam’s expression falls.

“Really?” Shuri brightens up, smiling widely. “And you can show me around New York.”

“Yeah, totally!” Spurred on by Shuri’s eager response, Peter begins to climb again, with more ease and a much quicker pace. Maybe he doesn’t suck at making friends. His words are interrupted by the occasional pauses he takes to huff for breath. “I know the best— sandwich shop, and my friends— would think you’re awesome. My boyfriend’s really nice, and MJ is— the _coolest_. They’re always asking to meet— my teammates. Maybe we can go see— uh—” he grunts, straining for a handhold, “Star Wars? When it comes out.”

“Teammate,” Shuri echoes, voice growing smug as she watches Peter’s speck moving upward. “Careful to your right, there’s no rock there; move your hand left— there. Since when are we teammates, eh?”

“Wh— uhh… more of partners, maybe? I mean, like, we’d _make_ good partners, if we were.”

Shuri giggles despite herself. “And what does that make Sam?”

“Hey, I’m happy with chauffeur and muscle,” Sam answers, grinning. “Bodyguard or bust, you know me. Take a nap in the car while you two are out fighting crime.”

“You know—” starts Peter, pushing himself upwards, and then the crag under his foot gives way, crumbling. Peter’s weight drops abruptly, and he blindly flails for a grip with the hand that had been free. His right palm lands full force on one of the jagged spikes of rock, slicing deep into his palm. Peter yelps and instinctively yanks away from the offending handhold. As if time has slowed, Peter can feel his body weight tip backwards into the gusting force of the wind, and with nothing but blackness meeting his eyes, Peter reacts with full-body, white-hot terror to the idea of falling into a void.

He cries out a protest of “no, _no!_ ” and makes a desperate lurch, floundering out with his left hand as he begins to fall. He only drops five or ten feet before his fingers just barely snag a smooth piece of granite and adhere to the rockface, but his feet have nothing to catch on. His momentum makes his body slam against the face of the _Knife_ painfully. A little cascade of pebbles tumbles down beneath him. Peter is hanging by one hand, body dangling in the gusts of wind, pulse racing at 135 BPM and the barrel of his chest heaving up and down frantically as his feet scrabble for some kind of grip. His hand is throbbing too much to even lift, and blood drizzles freely from it— he can feel the warm liquid trickling off the tips of his fingers.

The comm is chattering. Peter processes that it’s Shuri and Sam, probably asking if he’s alright, pleading for him to confirm that he’s still alive, but the words are incoherent. All he can hear is sharp ringing, his own heart _thud-thud-thudding_ against his ribs, it’s making the blood drip faster, he swears he can hear the drops hitting the rocks hundreds of feet below, even over the winds, he’s never willed his heart to slow its beating so urgently. The muted sounds of his own breathing and the pain and the wind and the blood are enough to make his senses turn to static, and Peter realizes with some horror that he _might_ have a panic attack up here.

 _Stick,_ his instincts tell him, halting the panic in its tracks. Peter huffs, gingerly trying to adhere to the rock with his cut hand. Pain ripples up to his elbow, and he hisses quietly. _Okay. Not good._ He switches to seeking out stability with his feet, tentatively feeling for some kind of support. At knee height, there are little clumps of rock to tuck his toes into to take some of the bodyweight off his hand. So he rests, half-squatting, left hand stuck to the rock, right hand dangling, knees bent as he crouches precariously against the _Knife_.

Slowly, he focuses on the voices in his comm, trying to listen, bring himself back into the moment. The words float and garble, as if reversed or delayed; Peter bites his tongue so hard he swears it’ll start bleeding, too. He has to listen. He has to hear. They might be telling him something important—

“Focus,” Tony says, clear as day. It makes Peter’s eyes snap wide, and he swivels his head, as if looking for the source of the voice. His vis-goggles scrape on the rocks, and he jerks his head back, startled.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter pants, to which Tony answers, “Just listen to me, kid. You’re good. Focus. You’re okay—”

“—need you to tell us if you’re okay.” It’s Sam’s voice.

Tony isn’t here. Peter’s heart sinks.

“I fell,” Peter finally manages, voice watery. He clears his throat, trying to steady his tone. “I cut my hand on the rocks. I— I think it’s pretty bad.” He _knows_ it’s pretty bad. He can feel more blood oozing from his hand with every thump of his heart in his chest.

Sam lowers his head, cursing under his breath, and Shuri’s posture weakens. The chances of getting the beacon set up just dropped by 15%; his survival by 40%.

He could still make it to the top, but he might not make it down.

 

 **827 feet.** _Pulse:_ 128 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 94%.   _Body temp:_ 95F. _Outside temp:_ 6F.

“I need to bandage it, it’s bleeding all over, and I can’t even see how deep it is,” Peter continues. His voice cracks, bordering hysteria. “It might need stitches, I don’t know, it could have cut a nerve, I gotta— I need to stop the blood. And water, I need water—”  

“Okay,” Sam cuts in over Peter’s babble. “Okay, put your back to the rock. Parker— hey, listen up. Back to the mountain, use your feet as a shelf. You know how.”

Shuri encourages him with, “listen to him, Peter,” and Peter takes another moment to swallow down his panic before nodding. With deliberate and slow movements, he twists his body and simultaneously extends one leg down, planting his foot against the rock. Painstakingly, he slides the backpack strap off one shoulder, bringing it around to hang off his chest, and then he does the same movement with the other foot. It leaves him at a weird angle, hand still stuck above his head and half-twisted, backpack in his lap, feet flat against the _Knife._ With a burst of courage, releases his left hand, immediately pressing his back to the cliff. He sticks and lets his head thud against the cold granite, squeezing his eyes shut. “...okay.”

“You do it?” Sam asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, did it.” As he speaks, Peter slowly opens the backpack’s zipper a few inches, not wanting to spill anything, and reaches his uninjured hand inside. The wind pushes and drives at him, threatening his balance, and he goes rigid, pushing himself flush against the rock and willing his knees to stop trembling. The only good thing is that his other hand is warm now, but his body itself has taken to trembling in the freezing wind. He’s just glad it isn’t snowing.

“There should be an anesthetic in the medical kit,” Shuri says. “I put tape on the button so you can feel for it, but you should not administer the anesthetic until you’ve bandaged your hand. You’re going to have to bandage by feeling. It isn’t dark enough to remove the eyepiece yet.”

The most Peter can acknowledge her is a mumbled “mhm.” With his scarf pushed up overtop of his nose, Peter is already holding the strip of gauze in his mouth. He unravels and wraps the white material over and around his hand, looping it over his wrist and through his fingers to keep it secure. His own fingers poking and prodding at the wound are painful enough, but when Peter feels that there’s a cut on the _top_ of his hand, too, his stomach does a full backflip. Bile surges up in his throat. It went all the way through, but he didn’t feel it — probably because of the freezing temperatures.

“Jesus,” he mutters, half in shock, half in a pitiful attempt at a pun. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

He keeps wrapping until it’s thickly padded and the gauze is near empty. It’s sloppy, but tight enough to stop the blood after a while, he hopes. He rips the gauze with his teeth and ties it off. “Anesthetic now,” he updates, groping for the needle. It’s a repurposed Epipen — of course Shuri can repurpose an Epipen, she can do anything. The only difference is that this Epipen has a button. _So you don’t have to jab yourself so hard,_ she had said. Peter clutches it to his chest like his life depends on it. In a way, it does. He’s terrified of dropping it. Slowly, he prods his wrist, braces himself, pushes the needle into his skin, and then presses down on the button.

It’s amazing how fast it works. Relief floods into his bloodied hand, and he flexes it a few times, testing it. “It’s good,” he says, dumping the needle back in the backpack. He fumbles for the water, guzzling it as Sam speaks.

“Good. That’ll help you come down.”

“—what!?” Peter yanks the bottle away prematurely, wiping at his lips with the back of his hand. “Come down? I’m not coming down. I’m almost halfway there.”

“You’re hurt, kid. It’s not worth it—”

Peter snaps, “yes, it _is!_ ” and screws the lid back on his water bottle, then performs a quick mandatory equipment check to himself as he speaks. “I’m almost halfway up, and today is the _one_ day with more moonlight. Tomorrow I can’t climb at all. I’m _not_ coming down.” All six beacon parts are present. He yanks the backpack zipped.

Silence from the comm.

The monitor of Peter’s vis-goggles displays the valley, all spread out before him, and Shuri considers the irony of this. Peter has never seen his view from this perspective, and he never will. Even though it’s just a digital replication, it’s beautiful, and Shuri contemplates once again how much she wishes she could be at her lab to make something that could actually _see_ the beauty of this inverted Vormir first hand. Peaks crest and fall like massive and deadly sharp ocean waves, the valleys below plunging into pixelated mist; in some places, the mist is dark, leading into unseen pits and tunnels, and the altimeter over these caves reads negative numbers in the thousands. Peter jokes that they’re a series of giant caves for real-life Exogorths. Shuri tells him Star Wars isn’t real. Sam, more bleakly, thinks they’re mass soul graves, but says nothing of it.

Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t see. His courage is literally blind, and Shuri wonders if he’d still have such determination and bravery if he could see the magnitude of his challenge. She shakes away the thought immediately.

Of course he would.

Sam is staring grimly at the monitor, and then meets Shuri’s eyes. He leans forward and closes his hand over the microphone, speaking in a low voice. “You know he’s not gonna make it. Not with a busted hand. —He listens to you.”

“We might not have many more chances,” Shuri counters, but it’s nearly a plea. She wants to agree, to tell Peter to come down — but she can’t. “It would be a waste of a trip, and if he thinks he can do it, then he can do it.”

“And he might not come back many more times.” Sam’s mouth presses into a thin line, words becoming terse. “How we gonna get that thing up there if we don’t have him?”

Shuri gives him a scathing look. “Is the beacon all you care about?"

"That's not—"

"He's more likely to hurt himself coming down than going up," Shuri says, "and he will not forgive us for making him come back if he thinks he can make it. We need to contact the others, yes, but it is be better to have three hearts and hope than two hearts and a grave.”

Sam, silent, lifts his hand to rub at his eyes.

If he could, he’d be up there. His wings had been nowhere to be found when he had woken up on Vormir, and the tiny compound the three of them had taken shelter in has nothing even _close_ to what’s needed for Shuri to make something similar to it. He hates being down here to watch. He hates watching. He hates the screen, he hates looking at all the shit Peter can’t see and he hates feeling his heart seize in his chest every time Peter slips or stalls out or almost falls to his death—

“I can _do_ this.” Peter breaks the silence with a firm voice. Sam looks up at Shuri, who returns his gaze with a wordless determination. _He can do this._

Slowly, Sam releases the microphone and leans back in his chair. “Alright, kid. Haul ass.”

The going is slower after that. Peter’s hand holds him back from moving as quickly as he’d like to, but he pushes past it, doing his best to simultaneously favor his injury and maintain a decent pace. When he breaks 1000 feet, he asks Shuri to turn on music to keep him motivated. It seems like a simple request at first, but when Shuri searches for music and takes a glance at his vitals on the same screen, dread rests heavily in her gut.

 

 **1007 feet.** _Pulse:_ 123 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 92%.   _Body temp:_ 93F. _Outside temp:_ 3F.  
**WARNING:** GUSTS TO 30 MPH

His heart hasn’t slowed much since he fell and caught himself, though his climbing rate isn’t breakneck speed. Peter’s body hasn’t let his guard down since then, danger sense guiding him to secure hand- and foot-holds. Sam’s brows are knitted, listening to the occasional harsh inhale Peter tries to take. The air is getting thinner as he goes up, and paired with the freezing wind and loss of blood, his body is starting to have a difficult time. The more Peter strains himself now, the harder his body is going to crash later.

Sam speaks too lowly for the microphone to pick up. “His temp’s below 95. He’s gonna start showing signs of hypothermia soon.”

“I know,” Shuri murmurs, giving him a tense look. “I know, Sam.”

“Music?” pants Peter.

After a moment, the gentle notes of BJ Thomas’ _Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head_ pour through Peter’s comm. He makes a face of surprise, but continues pulling himself upwards. “Was this on my playlist?”

“No,” Shuri answers. “It was on mine.”

As if cast under a spell by the calming notes of the song, Peter goes still, head swiveling to his left. He swears he can feel a warm breeze, carrying the scent of slightly burnt cookies. Along with the song are two things: first, an eerie, long note — like a distant choir’s humming, or the sound of wind through a tunnel. And second, a woman’s soft humming along to the words; _it won’t be long ‘til happiness steps up to greet me…_

Peter keeps his body pressed against the rock, blinking hard, trying to figure out where the sounds and smells are coming from. Shuri doesn’t sound like that, so it can’t be her humming; definitely not Sam either. The wind batters him, and he pulls himself closer, craning his head as if to listen—

“Peter,” May says, and the scene bursts to life before his eyes. Warm light pours through the windows of the apartment, early morning sunlight dancing on the tiles and reflecting off the record player. The same song plays tinnily from the vinyl that’s on. May’s squatting in front of him, holding a single cookie, hair tucked behind her ears and glasses perched on top of her head. Her brows are delicately knit with concern. “Sweetheart, you okay? You look worried about something.”

In shock and not fully believing his eyes, it takes Peter a long moment to shake himself out of his trance and answer, “I— yeah, I’m okay.” A smile pulls at his features briefly, and he can’t tear his eyes away from her. The answer from his mouth seemed prescribed, as if he’s said it before. All of this is haze, dappled in the warm hues. His movements aren’t his own. It’s dreamlike.

“Do you not want to go on the trip? You can stay home if you want to,” May continues. She extends her hand. “Here, eat your cookie. I can call Mr. Harrington and have him take you off the roster—”

“No—” Peter starts, taking his cookie and holding it gingerly, “—no, it’s okay,” but May is already heading for the phone. Peter clambers to his feet, zombie-like, following her. “Really, it’s okay, please— I _wanna_ go.”

She stops, staring at him seriously. Her eyes search his face for sincerity, narrowing playfully. “Are you _sure,_ ” she says. “One hundred percent sure. Because I’m not gonna complain if you wanna take a few days off.”

 _I don’t want to go,_ Peter thinks desperately. He wants to stay. He wants to stay with May and have never gone on that stupid field trip or gotten on the ship up to space. Tony was right. He shouldn’t have come. But his memory doesn’t listen. “I’m sure. I want to go,” he answers, smiling. It feels robotic.

The song is still playing. Peter’s smile fades. This is just a memory. He knows it’s just a memory, but he wants to say something. He can’t. He can feel the next response in this throat, but somehow, he shoves himself out of the circuit. As if breaking to the surface after having been held underwater, he sucks in a ragged breath and blurts, voice shaking, “I _miss_ you,”  his throat knots up, “so much.”

May’s expression softens with concern. “What..?” Peter doesn’t move. That wasn’t in the script. He swallows, swaying where he stands, eyes welling with tears and throat too thick to speak. May takes a step forward, huffing a confused laugh. “What do you mean, honey? I’m right here.”

Peter can’t answer her, paralyzed by the demand to abide by the memory’s actual playback. May doesn’t miss his lip quivering and immediately reaches out towards him. “Oh— Peter, it’s okay. —it’s okay. I understand.”

Before May can touch him, her hands begin to dissolve.

Peter’s heart lurches, eyes going wide with horror. The warm lighting is too familiar, too close to Titan, and the music warps sadly, as if echoing across that empty planet surface. He reaches up immediately, but his fingers just pass through the little clouds of ash that would have been her hands, dispersing them in the air.

“No,” he protests. “No, no—”

_Please don’t make me watch this._

May doesn’t notice it. “Listen— listen to what the song says. Happiness is never very far away.” Her smile is soft, encouraging. The music echoes hauntingly as the apartment crumbles around Peter.

“May, please,” Peter begs, hands lifting to cup her face. His mouth is dry, words slurring with urgency and fear. “Please, just look at yourself! You have to fight it— stay, _please_ stay—”

“You can do this,” she says, completely unaware, still smiling. “I’ll be right here waiting when you get back.”

She turns to dust in his hands.

 

Peter snaps his eyes open with a gasp. He’s not in his memory anymore, instead gripping the freezing crags of rock on the surface of the _Knife_ , wind tearing into his skin and vis-goggles blocking his vision. In his ear, the tinny notes of May’s song are still lilting along. He struggles to catch his breath, gulping down the burning air.

“Peter?” Shuri says softly. It jars the panic from his mind, and his mind focuses in on her voice, as if a camera lens narrowing. “You’ve stopped. And your heart rate— are you okay?”

“Fine,” Peter pants. “I’m fine, just— had to take a break.” Without another word, he forces himself to climb. Panic and horror set a tremble into his body, and Peter recalls May’s gentle humming from moments ago. He hesitantly imitates it in an attempt to calm himself.

It works. The gentle vibrations of his own humming in his throat and chest make it easier to breathe. After the song has gone on for a while: “You have good taste. Old, kinda weird, but... good." His voice is quiet. “—Can you play it again? Please.”

“I’ll put it on repeat.”

“You think that’s old, you should hear Cap’s,” Sam snorts. “The man still owns a record player.”

Peter manages to mock offense, trying to brighten his own spirits. “ _I_ have a record player.” He grunts, reaching upwards with his left arm, then immediately sinks back to his previous perch when the wind nearly knocks him off his balance. It’s bitterly cold, actually _burning_ his exposed skin, and Peter shivers. “Uh— how much moonlight do I have left?”

Shuri opens her mouth to reply, but Sam speaks before she can, leaning forward. “Plenty. Don’t worry about it, kid. Just focus on climbing.”

“Alright,” Peter says, nodding and continuing his ascent. Shuri had been about to question Sam, but the audible relief in Peter’s voice makes her raise her brows a little, as if understanding. Sam leans forward to cover the microphone.

“Don’t stress him out,” Sam says, glancing to the timer on the monitor. He presses his lips together grimly. “Just let him get as far as he can.”

 

 **1500 feet.** _Pulse:_ 92...90...88 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 86%.   _Body temp:_ 90F. _Outside temp:_ -2F.  
**WARNING:** GUSTS TO 40 MPH; MOONSET ONCOMING

Moonset is a unique thing on Vormir.

Around him, the sky changes colors with the oncoming moonset. It works differently here— because of the double atmosphere, rather than the moon disappearing beyond the horizon, darkness creeps upwards on either side of the sky until it meets in the middle, as if an eye closing its lids to the sight of the moon. But until darkness engulfs the planet, the sky is alive with color that Peter can’t see. Brilliant wisps curl off the planet’s surface and drift skyward, as if steam from hot water; with them are tiny fragments of rock and small white specks of light. The wisps are blue at first, turning purple, then pink and yellow as they reach the atmosphere. As the sky grows darker on the east and west, the colors intensify and change, like vapor escaping just before a lid is put over a pot. If one were to look at it upside down, it would look like a slow, multi-colored waterfall, pooling in a magnificent swathe of hues in the gradually closing gap of moonlight left.

Here’s the thing: it _is_ upside down.

Vormir itself is void; a barren, rocky planet, long since abandoned by its former inhabitants. Instead, what resides there are the strange creatures, cruel winds, and half a dozen underground compounds flung sporadically among the mountains; beyond the mountains are the twin peaks, and beneath those peaks, the seas. And beneath the water, the soul stone.

Shuri pans the left monitor all the way out, sighing quietly. The mountain grows smaller, and the curve of the planet’s edge comes into view on the screen; above the horizon, a second planet’s edge comes into view, curving upwards — the _actual_ Vormir. As if someone has placed a mirror over the image, the two imitating planets look like they may collide, one sitting upside down on top of the other. In the middle of their horizons, Vormir’s twin peaks reach out to its mirror sets.

“A mirror dimension,” Sam had said when they first discovered the nature of the place, and Shuri had finished his thought by explaining that it was like a sheet of one way glass — here, on this identical planet suspended inverted over the real Vormir, they experience twice the atmosphere, twice the horizon, a closer moon, and heavier gravity. They can _see_ Vormir above them.

But the real Vormir sky sees only empty space and the brilliant, constant eclipse of its own moon. No deathly-close twin planet, no shimmering eyelid moonset, no Michelangelesque twin peaks reaching out to each other in silence as the two planets gravitate around each other in space. Peter playfully insists that they’re ‘invorted’ (He’d been giggling, “Get it? Inverted Vormir? Invorted?” and had been very disappointed in the response.)

The harsh truth is that there’s no way to get out. No way to communicate or to be found. If someone were to travel to the real Vormir, it would be completely vacant. The soul stone’s absence makes them invisible. And when the moon sets, they’re stuck into a cold, merciless darkness, with no hope of rescue.

Now, with the sky closing up around him, Peter’s breathing is ragged in his chest. His lips are split and bleeding, fingers gone completely numb in the subzero temperatures, but still, he climbs. If for nothing else than to put that memory out of his head and to take his focus off of the cuts in his skin and the ache in his chest, he climbs. By now, his danger sense has completely turned off; it’s too cold, too much anxiety. He’s grateful, really. Feeling danger for too long makes him shaky and nauseous. Occasionally, his hands don’t stick, and he has to physically grab the rocks instead of relying on his enhancement. His oxygen and pulse are below what they should be for his activity level, and continue to drop by the minute, making him sluggish and his eyelids heavy. Which doesn’t really matter— he’s been climbing with his eyes closed for a while, feeling his way around and relying on Shuri’s constant _more to the right — there’s a ledge coming up on your left — that’s unstable, find a different grip_. His bandage has bled through, but the blood has frozen to serve as its own makeshift clot.

Behind the monitor, Shuri and Sam sit in silence. It’s been two hours since Peter began, and neither of them have left the room for anything; Sam bounces his leg, Shuri chews her lip, both too anxious to be hungry or thirsty. The music has long since been turned off. Every so often, when Peter’s speck slows on the monitor, Shuri prompts him gently; he always responds with a joke along the lines of “I was just taking a little nap” or “Okay, _mom_.” His voice gets more exhausted with each halfhearted quip, but still, Sam admires the boy’s ability to keep it up, especially knowing what he’s facing at the end of this.

“Peter,” Shuri says into the mic, smiling a little. “Can you guess how high you are?”

“Not high enough to be doing this,” Peter grunts quietly. He’s spreadeagle against the _Knife,_ trying grope for his next handhold.

“Fifteen hundred and eighty feet,” she says. There’s a bit of excitement in her tone.

“Personal best,” Sam adds. “You’re only four hundred and twenty feet from the peak.”

The mic crackles with a weak “blaze it,” and the soft sound of Peter laughing to himself after it. Shuri can’t bring herself to laugh, but Sam huffs quietly and leans forward, mouth closer to the mic, eyes glued to the screen. “Tell you what. You get up there and I’ll give you my secret stash.”

Peter sounds incredulous, but out of breath. “Wait— you have a— secret stash?”

“Well, not exactly,” Sam says. “But I can _get_ one.”

Shuri catches a glimpse of the moonlight remaining counter. A wave of nausea hits her. “Peter,” she says, “we need you to move quickly, please. If you can.”

Immediately, “Why?” He rubs his hand on his chest for a moment, trying to warm it. “Why, Shuri? Is it getting dark?”

Yes. “No.” She winces at the lie. “But we want you to be descending before it starts to.”

The sliver of moonset overhead is narrowing by the minute. With specks of white and intangible waves of brilliant color seeping past Peter as he climbs upward, the _Knife_ looks like a spire among Vormir’s colorful escape to the heavens above. The sky’s eye is just a little more than half closed, darkness creeping up from the east and west, while the moonlight from overhead bathes the peak in fading pink, purple, and yellow interacting and reflecting with the upward stream of particles and color. As soon as the eye shuts, Vormir will be plunged into darkness. When the light goes, it takes their last shred of hope with it.

 _Things_ come out after dark.

The vis-goggles can’t pick them up after dark, and their monitors aren’t always reliable. There’s little way to warn Peter where they come from or how to get away from them, and he certainly can’t fight them off now— not at this height. It takes everything Peter has, frozen and reaching his limits, just to cling to the side of the mountain; there’s no way he can run from or fight off the creatures he can’t even see. There’s no slope to the _Knife_ anymore. The peak, after 1500 feet, is straight up; the rock occasionally juts out into small platforms, just barely wide enough for Peter to curl up on and rest, but they’re only every so often, and it’s by luck that Peter ever stumbles upon them.

He has yet to find one today, and he needs it badly.

Shuri has taken to reading off his altitude to him as he climbs, but Peter barely processes it. It’s monotonous — hand, foot, push up, hand, foot, push up. If there’s no hand hold, Peter has to stick. He wishes he had his webshooters. Or his Stark suit. At least that had a heater. Shuri wonders if Peter will even be able to assemble the beacon if he reaches the peak.

Peter has been silent for ten minutes, despite Sam’s horrible jokes and Shuri’s encouragement.

“How you holding up, kid,” Sam asks, brows taut. “Talk to us.”

A long delay. “Doing— great,” Peter responds, doing his best to sound alright.

“Your body temp’s looking a little low. You still feeling the cold?”

Peter lies, “Yeah, definitely feeling it.”

He hasn’t _felt_ cold in a while, and he knows what that means. The freezing temperature is killing him. His limbs are moving slower, his heart thumping erratically and sluggishly in his chest. The only good thing about hypothermia is that he feels warm. He knows he is cold — his teeth are chattering, his fingers stiff, his body shaking uncontrollably — but he doesn’t have to _feel_ cold anymore. It’s a small mercy.

“Sixteen fifty,” the comm announces. Shuri’s voice is tight. “You can’t slow down, Peter.”

“Yeah,” he huffs. “I know.” He imagines the sky, tries to picture what the eyelid moonset would look like from here. He imagines it in white, like the Earth’s moon, but much more brilliant; can see himself, grappling his way up the mountain in a silver silhouette, the mountain gleaming under the massive moon. But really, his frame is doused in the pink-orange vapor that escapes into the slowly closing slit of light overhead; the _Knife_ itself is black, standing monochrome among the brilliant landscape of dying color.

Shuri wants her brother.

More than anything, she wants T’Challa here. He would know what to do, would have some clever plan to bypass the need for the beacon whatsoever. He would have contacted home by now. Shuri closes her eyes for a moment and imagines him walking into the cramped monitor room; she imagines shoving out of the chair and barreling into him for a hug; imagines his soft, rumbling laughter, his arms around her. He would say, smiling smugly as if she has had nothing to worry about and this has all been a bad dream, “You did not _miss_ me, did you?”

 _I do miss you,_ Shuri thinks.

And then she realizes that for him to be here, he would have to be dead, too. Her body stiffens in response to that thought. She doesn’t want him here so badly anymore, so long as he’s alive. And if he’s alive, then he’s looking for her, surely.

The monitor wails horribly, snapping her out of her trance. Her eyes lock on the screen.

 

 **1675 feet.** _Pulse:_ 60 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 80%.   _Body temp:_ 88 F. _Outside temp:_ -9 F.  
**WARNING:** GUSTS TO 40 MPH; MOONSET ONCOMING  
**_ALERT:_** _Pulse drop!_

“Parker—” Sam’s voice is urgent, but he keeps it flat, trying to keep the panic out of his tone. “Need you to wake up, kid. We’re losing you.”

Shuri’s flick over the display. Peter’s vis-goggles are reading too close to the rockface for her to see how he’s placed, what he’s looking at. “What’s happening, Peter? What’s wrong?”

“Tired,” Peter murmurs. His head is resting against the rock, elbows trembling as he struggles to keep himself up. “Really… really tired.”

“You are _not_ giving up now.” Her own sternness surprises her. “You are closer than you have ever been. You _cannot_ stop.”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t climb. For a horrible moment, Shuri swears she can see his frame sway backwards, as if he’s going to fall, but then the comm crackles with the sound of soft singing.

“—so I just,” Peter murmurs to himself, “did me some talkin’ to the sun—”

He hauls a hand over his head, and, arms shaking, pulls himself up. “And I said I didn’t like — the way he got things done,” he shoves his foot against a cleft of the rock and pushes up, “sleepin’ on the job, those,” he pants for breath, winces, “raindrops are falling on my head—”

Peter cuts off into humming, mumbling what words he can remember between breaths as he pulls himself higher. Overhead, darkness has almost completely overtaken the sky. The vis-goggles are struggling to pick up the light, making it harder for Shuri to try and guide Peter.

What they can’t see is that Vormir’s upward seeping colors have lost their pink hue; the sky is awash in gold. Peter’s ascent in the dying moonlight is now aureate, warm hues rushing upwards towards the quickly sealing sky, as if buffeting him upwards with golden encouragement, whispering: _Something is waiting for you._

“I’m gonna make it,” Peter huffs. His hand has started to bleed again, staining the rocks with red. On the monitor, his pulse slowly climbs back into the normal window.

“You’re gonna make it,” Sam echoes. “Just one hand up at a time. You’re almost there.”

The hopefulness in Sam’s’ voice, the unseen golden upwash, and Peter’s quiet humming is enough to propel him upwards for a time. He repeatedly mutters to himself that he’ll make it. He’ll make it. He has to make it this time.

But hope as he might, his body isn’t strong enough to rebel against the conditions. The wind knocks his balance off, makes his heart lurch when he can’t find a handhold in quick enough time. And his fingers don’t curl into the nooks and clefts of rock as they had when he began his ascent. He’s clumsy, banging his knuckles into the jagged bits of rock and wobbling every now and then. The vis-goggles dig into his skin, make his head feel heavier, and despite the utter blackness they provide, Peter can swear he’s started to see things.

“How,” Peter grits, tongue thick in his mouth, “am I doing?” He implies physically.

“Eighteen hundred feet. Your pulse is low,” Sam answers. “Oxygen’s at seventy five percent. You dizzy?”

His vision, or lack thereof, is swimming. Peter swallows thickly, robotically shoves himself upward. “Yes.”

“Your body temperature is eighty seven. I hope you are warming your hands,” Shuri says. She doesn’t need to warn him what happens if he doesn’t. He knows.

“Or you’ll,” he pauses, laughing groggily. “You’ll cut my fingers off, won’t you.”

Okay, he doesn’t know. Shuri frowns. “No. That’s gangrene.”

“Two hundred more feet, kid,” Sam says. “You got it in you. I know you do.”

Peter thinks, _and two thousand feet down. Why don’t they ever mention the coming down?_

“Shuri,” Peter says, no longer disguising the weakness of his tone. “Shuri, I need a place to.. I need— a ledge, is there…”

“I can’t see,” Shuri replies. A line of concern appears between her brows. “You have to keep climbing. I’ll tell you if I see one. Just climb, Peter, please.”

He groans softly, lets his head hang for a moment. “You know, Hannah Montana sang about this,” he grumbles, obediently beginning to crawl his way upwards once more. The joke doesn’t land. Silence from the comm. Peter, too numbed by the cold and exhaustion to repeat himself, allows his mind to wander to thoughts of the sky again. He imagines it full of light, wonders how the moon looks. They said he had plenty of time. In his mind’s eye, Vormir’s horizon is still ablaze with light, the tapestry of its moon unfurled from east to west in full view. He thinks he has time. He’s just fighting his body. He just has to climb. _Rest a little, then climb. Assemble the beacon. Then come down. Then rest. Just a few more feet. I have time. I’m okay._

 

 **1803 feet.** _Moonset in 3 minutes._

Shuri flicks the mic off and turns away, throat clamping shut with panic. Sam detaches his gaze from the screen, alarmed by her sudden movement. The fear is written plainly across her face, fists balled and resting on top of her knees. Sam, instinctively, reaches out to grip her wrist as a comfort. “What?” he says. She shakes her head. More urgently: “ _What?_ ”

“I don’t want to watch this again.”

Sam’s face slackens, and he dips his head in understanding. Her hand turns over to take Sam’s, small in his palm, fingers gripping him tightly in return. His thumb strokes her knuckles, and he lifts his free hand to rub at his mouth.

Outside the small monitor room, the compound snakes out into dismal concrete halls. Only three of the rooms are taken; it’s been Sam, Shuri, and Peter for a long time. Shuri had found the compound, Sam had found Shuri, and they had found Peter together. Somewhere, miles away, there are other compounds. But without the beacon, there’s no way to contact them. The mountains provide too much interference. The compounds must be likewise filled with little groups of the Avengers. Sam is certain of that. He watched them die the same way he had. Bucky is out there. T’Challa, too. Maybe they're together.

He hasn’t told Shuri he watched her brother die.

“I’m sorry.” It feels hollow in his mouth, too quiet to echo in the small room. She’s just a kid. She shouldn’t _have_ to watch it again. “Look, I can handle it. You don’t have to watch—”

She cuts him off immediately. “No.” Her posture straightens with determination. No heir of Wakanda would turn their back on their responsibility — their _friend_ — right now. T’Challa wouldn’t. Ramonda wouldn’t. Shuri won’t. She firms her chin and says again, more calmly, “No. We both stay with him.” She searches Sam’s face; his brows are knitted together, exhaustion evident in the loose set of his jaw. But his eyes are searching her face in return, almost pleadingly, as if saying: We can’t tell him what’s going to happen.

Shuri, in silent agreement, squeezes his hand.

“Not feeling good,” the comm crackles. Peter’s voice is groggy and strained. Shuri releases Sam’s hand to flip the microphone back on. Peter’s vitals are dropping again, and the readout from the vis-goggles is next to completely unreadable. The moonset counter drops to 60 seconds.

“Peter,” Shuri says. No answer. She repeats, more urgently, “Peter, answer me.”

Peter can feel his head loll forward, and though the vis-goggles leave him nothing to see, stars dance in his vision. He yanks his head upright with a gulp, blinking hard and gritting his teeth.

“—‘m here,” he says, voice small. After a moment, breath shallow and thin in his chest: “Guys?”

Sam’s response is staticky in Peter’s ear. “We’re with you, kid.”

“I — I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

“You’re going to make it,” Shuri says, forcing hope into her tone. “You can do this. We believe in you.” The lie stings like vinegar in the back of her throat, and she grimaces, looking away from the screen. As darkness closes in over Vormir, Shuri’s heart sinks with dread.

Peter Parker is going to die again, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

 

Like hundreds of souls fleeing their rocky graves, the last golden vapors of the moonset phenomenon race upwards from the surface of Vormir and into the rapidly diminishing chasm overhead. When the chasm narrows to a slit, the moon no longer strikes the surface of the rocks and mist below, and only those wafts that had already been in the air can be seen draining through sky’s eye in the last few seconds of moonset. As the moon strikes less and less of the _Knife_ and its surrounding peaks, some of these souls are devoured by the rising darkness before they can escape. And as they pass Peter, these vapor-souls whisper in thousands of indistinguishable voices; beneath his vis-goggles, Peter swears he can see gold.

He cranes his head upward, listening to the direction of the murmuring, mouth slightly agape. His breath rattles in his chest. With the vis-goggles pointed up and a final burst of golden light brightening her screen, Shuri can just make out a ledge, and exclaims: “There! Peter, above you and to the right!”

“A ledge?”

“Yes! Yes, right there! It must be only ten feet above you.”

The wind stills for a moment as the moonset creeps to just a brilliant slit in the night sky. The counter ticks to zero and, with a gentle breeze as if entire planet sighing, the eye slips closed. Gold vanishes into darkness in a moment.

The monitors go black, and Shuri sinks back into her seat. Sam doesn’t dare break the silence.

 

 **1833 feet.** _Pulse:_ 57 BPM. _Oxygen:_ 72%.   _Body temp:_ 84F. _Outside temp:_ -15F.

Peter’s hands find their grip on the precipice of the ledge, and relief wells up in his chest. It takes every bit of strength he has — arms shaking, breathing rough — to pull himself over the edge and onto the small space of rock. It’s just big enough for him to tuck his whole body onto, curving just slightly to protect him from the wind. He’s too stiff, can barely shift enough to pull the backpack off his shoulders and into his lap, but when he does, he draws his knees up to his chest and shivers freely.

“M-made it,” he gasps out. “Just— just need to rest a while.”

“Okay.” Shuri has nothing else to watch but his vitals and his altitude now.

He sniffles, lifts the scarf and wipes at his nose. He’s surprised to feel his nose come away more wet than before. Blood, he realizes, but when he tries to feel the bandage with his opposite hand, he can’t feel the wetness. Too numb. Defeatedly: “I’m still— I think I’ve been bleeding this whole time.” He lets his head rest against the rock, rigidly brings his knees up to his chest. Careful to keep the backpack secure in his lap.

“You should get the blanket out of the backpack,” Sam says. “Cold as hell up there.”

Silence.

“Parker.”

“—that’s.. a lot of work.”

Shuri encourages him. “You should try to anyway.”

Vaguely, Peter’s danger sense flares. Something’s near. But that can’t be right, because it’s still light out. He swallows roughly. “How long til— moonset?”

“It’s not getting dark,” Sam lies. The proximity monitor flashes silently, and Shuri exhales hard, feeling suddenly hollow. Sam sees it too, expression solemn. “There’s no danger. Just rest.”

He carefully avoids telling Peter that he’s going to be alright, but Peter says, “Okay.” Then, in a much quieter voice: “I’m gonna be okay.”

Silence from Peter’s end for a long time.

Peter’s vitals continue to drop, and beneath the vis-goggles, his eyes have slipped shut. He’s leaning against the _Knife,_ trembling violently, but feeling no pain. Peter hugs himself tightly, hand occasionally rubbing at his chest or ribs for comfort.

And then he starts singing again. His voice is quiet and childlike, as if he’s forgotten that Shuri and Sam can hear him. With hypothermia slowing his brain and his functions, he struggles to remember some of the words; he switches between humming and singing the one verse he can recall. His mind fills in his blanks with May’s voice.

“The blues they send to meet me,” he quivers, “won’t defeat me,” a long pause, “and it won’t be long ‘til happiness steps up to greet me—” He breaks off into humming.

They don’t even bother to tell him to climb again. He wouldn’t be able to.

“Doing okay?” Sam asks quietly.

“Miss my aunt,” Peter breathes. “Miss Tony. —miss home.”

“We’re going to get there,” Shuri says. “I promise you.”

Peter’s voice is drowsy. “I know we will. I believe you.”

“You have to show me around New York.”

“—and we’re gonna see Star Wars,” Peter finishes. He smiles a little. “And you gotta meet my boyfriend. And my aunt — and my uncle... and my Tony. Sam, you too, we’ll have a— a sleepover, May can make a, um, a — lasagna...”

His chattering cuts in and out over their comm system, broken up by the wind, but it’s obvious that he trails off, exhausted. His pulse is dropping quickly. The proximity monitor has only displayed something closer, but Peter’s danger sense dulled out. He can’t see, can’t hear it over the wind, has no idea. Sam feels sick.

Shuri wonders if he dreams while he’s gone. Wonders if he’s suspended in time thinking about something pleasant, or if he’s permanently trapped in his last moments. Her throat thickens.

“Tell us more,” Shuri says, voice nearly breaking. No response. “Peter? Keep talking about that.”

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “I.. I think I have to sleep.”

She can’t bring herself to reply, biting down on her bottom lip, watching the monitor light up with warnings. _LOW PULSE. LOW OXYGEN. PROXIMITY ALERT. LOW TEMPERATURE._

“Can I tell you about it tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Shuri answers, working hard to say it steadily. “Yes, you can.”

He doesn’t respond. His heart is still beating, dwindling slowly. Shuri’s stomach is in her throat as she reaches out to touch the monitor for one last adjustment.

On top of the _Knife,_ Peter smiles softly as the opening notes of his song spill through the comm. His lips move along to the words, but no sound comes out. He thinks of home. Golden sunlight. May, MJ, his friends, all the things that are waiting for him as soon as he falls asleep. As it reaches the chorus, Peter whispers, “thanks, Shuri.”

Heat pricks at her eyes. “See you tomorrow,” she says softly.  

 

They don’t leave until his vitals flatline. When they do, Sam is the one to reach up and turn the monitor off. As if suspended in a dream, the two move in silence, slowly, resetting the equipment for next time, pushing their chairs in. On the way out, Shuri picks up a pencil. The wall near the lightswitch is ornamented with score-marks. Shuri scratches out another one, sets the pencil down, and turns the light off.

Before she returns to her own bedroom, Shuri makes her way through the dim halls and to the garden. It’s a small, sad sight; nothing like Wakanda. Nothing here is like Wakanda. Just a dozen feeble plants pushing their way up out of a pile of dirt, dangling miserably in the artificial lighting. Shuri plucks a white rose and cradles it in her palms reverently as she backtracks through the halls to the bedrooms.

Peter’s room is dark and somber, undecorated, no windows. More like a cell, she thinks. She flicks the light on and stands by his bed, wavering on the balls of her feet. And then, one by one, she plucks the petals off the rose and scatters them over the pillow and mattress. The stem she keeps for herself. It’s irrational, but somehow, she feels that keeping the stem will guarantee he’ll come back this time. He’s never not come back. There’s no reason for her to fear it, really, after how many times they’ve done this, but still, she always keeps the stem until the next morning when she hears Peter knock on her door.

The first time, they hadn’t known he’d come back. Both Sam and Shuri had been devastated, sitting in silence — in disbelief and horror — for hours. He had fallen to his death. They had planned on making some sort of memorial or grave for him the next morning, but when they woke up, Peter was sitting in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal, completely oblivious to his own loss.

So no more graves, then. Little need to mourn. It _is_ the soul world, after all— Vormir cares for its dead and returns them unharmed.

He goes up again. He falls.  
Comes back and goes up again. He freezes.  
Again. He fights and fails.    
Again, again, again.

His courage never wavers; he doesn’t forget the goal or the stakes, and though he never remembers _dying_ , Peter can put two and two together. He still goes. Shuri becomes efficient at making what parts of the beacon end up broken, preparing Peter’s bag — which always ends up by his bedside — so he can be ready to head up in the short time of moonlight available. They calculate the best times, the best routes. They know exactly how to do it.

They just never can.

For now, this is as much of a grave as Shuri can give him.

Shuri returns to her own room, clutching the rose stem to her chest. She thinks about T’Challa, who may be hundreds of miles away, sitting in a similar compound, sharing dinner with Bucky. She thinks of home, wonders who is taking care of Wakanda with her and her brother gone, and thinks of what Peter’s home must be like with him gone.

 

And she thinks maybe, just maybe, she won’t have a stem on her nightstand tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> my twitter is [@hocosuit!](http://twitter.com/hocosuit) thank you for reading <3 if you liked it i would rly love if you commented!! they make my day!


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